Frog Service

"Green Frog Service" redirects here. For the intercity bus service, see Green Frog Hybrid Buses. For other, see green frog (disambiguation).

The green frog carried on every piece. According to Josiah Wedgwood's Victorian biographer "he was very unwilling to disfigure the service with this reptile [sic], but was told it was not to be dispensed with".[1]
Serving-plate with Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire, Birmingham Museum of Art

The Frog Service or Green Frog Service is a large dinner and dessert service made by the English pottery company Wedgwood for Empress Catherine the Great of Russia, and completed in 1774. The service had fifty settings, and 944 pieces were ordered, 680 for the dinner service and 264 for the dessert.[2][3] At Catherine's request the hand-painted decoration showed British scenes, copied from prints, with a total of 1,222 views. In addition each piece had a green frog within a shield, a reference to the name of the palace it was intended for.[4]

Most unusually for a formal royal service, it was made from Wedgwood's "Queen's ware", the firm's type of creamware or fine earthenware. Normally, large services for royalty and the top nobility were in porcelain, like the Meissen Swan Service, and an imperial order for a large earthenware service was a great coup, representing a landmark in Staffordshire pottery's conquest of European markets.[5]

The great majority of pieces are now in the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, where many are on display.[6]

  1. ^ Jewitt, 211
  2. ^ Mikhail B. Piotrovsky (2000). Treasures of Catherine the Great. Harry N. Abrams. p. 184.
  3. ^ BM, Wedgwood Museum
  4. ^ BM; Sweet; Flanders, Judith, Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain, p. 64, HarperCollins UK, 2006, ISBN 0007172958, 9780007172955, google books
  5. ^ McKellar; Vaizey; Sweet
  6. ^ BM